150,000 Professionals to Be Nurtured

data
The Korean government is pushing to revitalize the domestic data industry and expand the data market.

The South Korean government has decided to expand the domestic data market, which is currently worth 6.3 trillion won, to 10 trillion won by 2022.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution Committee, presided over by the president, held its seventh meeting on June 26 to finalize the strategy to revitalize the underdeveloped data industry.

Chairman Chang Byeong-kyu said, "The government’s data policy that does not comply with the changes of the times is acting as a stumbling block to the spread of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. A paradigm shift in data use is required to strengthen the competitiveness of the nascent big data industry."

The government diagnosed that the domestic data industry has not grown because of a lack of quality data, a data usage system that does not reach the global level, a weak industry and a shallow technology base.

It is perceived that Korea has been lagging behind in actual data and AI learning data in the areas of autonomous car and smart city, which are considered to be an essential part of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and that there are not enough companies and professional manpower that have reached the global level.

The Ministry of Science and ICT and related ministries have come up with a strategy to revitalize the data industry in order to establish the foundation for fostering a world-class data industry.

The government decided to push forward with “My Data Pilot Project,” which can be implemented immediately without revising personal information related laws.

My Data Project is to allow citizens to download their own information directly from public and private institutes. A large-scale pilot project will be launched this year in the fields of medicine, finance and telecommunications.

According to the current law, an individual can browse his or her personal information stored by companies and organizations. When the pilot project is implemented, one can download the results of medical checkups from a hospital to one’s smart phone and use them for healthcare, or download voice and data usage information from telecom companies and get recommendations for customized calling plans.

In addition, the ministry plans to revise related laws such as the Personal Information Protection Law to clarify the scope of personal information within this year.

Public and private data are also to be widely opened.

The ministry will nurture big data specialized centers for the abundant generation and collection of raw data by industries. It will collect all the public data held by all public institutions in the form of raw data until August and open them to the public.

In addition, in order to efficiently store and manage data, the ministry plans to support introducing cloud in more than 10,000 venture companies over the next five years. It will nurture 100 hidden companies by supporting customized businesses that are suitable for big data specialists.

The ministry said, "The goal is to increase the domestic data market to 10 trillion won by 2022 and expand the data professional manpower to 150,000 by promoting the data industry. The big data utilization rate of enterprises will increase from 7.5% to 20%.”

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